BIOMOT: Motivational strength of ecosystem services and alternative ways to express the value of biodiversity

Onderzoeksproject

BIOMOT: Motivational strength of ecosystem services and alternative ways to express the value of biodiversity

Do sustainability values play a role in motivating people to act for biodiversity in successful projects and in successful leadership action? And how could these values be incorporated in current economic valuation methods?

Short abstract

Ecosystem services have great economic value, yet loss of biodiversity is ongoing. We need new ways to motivate people to protect biodiversity. This project addresses the values of biodiversity as they are used in economic valuation of ecosystem services and alternative ways to express the value of biodiversity. The aim and expected results are a novel view on the motivations of people to act for biodiversity, and to use that knowledge to improve policy measures for biodiversity.

Project descripion

Nature in Europe is currently experiencing a crisis of biodiversity degradation. Biodiversity competes with economic growth and food production for physical space and public attention. Hence, the crisis of biodiversity degradation can be seen as a problem of a lack of motivation by society to act for nature.

Monetary values of nature do not seem to provide sufficient motivation for society to act against biodiversity degradation in an effective way, even though there are few people who would disagree that nature has value. The search for an effective strategy to motivate the public and politics into action for nature is still ongoing.

CML is perfectly equipped to address this question. It has been involved in more than 10 EU-funded projects, both as coordinator and as regular partner. It has experience in environmental sciences, including biology, ecosystem services, economics, landscape management and industrial ecology.

In this project they look for sustainability values in three research lines:

Improvement of economic valuation methods

Biodiversity values in successful projects and

Biodiversity values in successful leadership for biodiversity

In this project all three research lines are embraced to arrive at new recommendations to motivate future biodiversity conservation.

The CML research in this project is carried out by Jeroen Admiraal in his PhD study called:
'Biodiversity values in economic methods, conservation projects and personal motivations to act for nature'